DuPont opening 30M gpy cellulosic ethanol facility in Iowa; largest in world
27 October 2015
DuPont will officially open its cellulosic ethanol facility in Nevada, Iowa, on 30 October; the plant will be the largest cellulosic ethanol plant in the world. The US Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) Director, Jonathan Male, alongside senior government officials, DuPont leaders and staff, and local farmers will attend the grand opening ceremony and plant tour.
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DuPont Cellulosic Ethanol Facility. Aerial view of plant, facing east (August 2015). Click to enlarge. |
The facility is expected to produce about 30 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year from corn stover that is harvested within a 30-mile radius of the site. Through a partnership between Proctor and Gamble and DuPont, some of the cellulosic ethanol from this plant will be used in a laundry detergent.
DuPont broke ground on this facility in 2012, although preparation for the building of this advanced biorefinery started in the early 2000s when it began working with DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on biofuels technology. According to DuPont, the biorefinery has provided many job and financial opportunities for this rural area of the United States, such as employing 1,000 construction workers, obtaining corn stover from approximately 500 nearby farmers, hiring 85 employees to work at the plant, and using another 150 people to collect, transport, and store feedstock.
DOE has supported DuPont by funding key bioenergy conversion technologies and collaborating on research and development projects. Under a competitively selected DOE award, DuPont worked with the NREL to create improved biomass pretreatment and ethanol production technologies. The collaboration focused on two key areas:
Tt\he development, optimization, and scale-up of Zymomonas mobilis—a bacterium that enhances the fermentation of biomass sugars—for production of biofuels.
Developing a mild ammonia pretreatment process suitable for corn stover residues.
More than 10 joint DuPont-NREL US patents were issued from the innovations developed in these two areas.
In total, DOE has contributed more than $51 million dollars to advance various technologies that helped bring DuPont’s new biorefinery to fruition.
Nothing on cost. It looks like they expect RFA mandates to let them sell whatever they make.
30 million GPY is about 0.025% of US motor fuel consumption. It would take a LOT of plants this size to feed it. The resource will run out long before the demand does.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 29 October 2015 at 11:50 AM